special note to brother bear: those three on the bottom right (you know, the ones that are colored like actual natural substances) are actually recharge.
last weekend it was brother bear, sarah, and mamacita time. this weekend it's brother bear, sarah, and the dad time. in between, however, was herman@ time. so wonderful. i love you, dude.
it's just that my dreams, which are frequent and vivid, seem absolutely fascinating to me for the first couple of hours that i'm awake, and, as a result, i tend to impose them upon others. but, apart from the crucial 1980's cinematic history lesson (with videos!) it was probably kind of boring.
although, dude! i've been sick for the last few days, and the combination of a fever and many many hours of sleeping has resulted in some truly amazing ones!
don't worry, i've already subjected several people to hearing about several of them, so i'll just leave you with the following tiny bit of a dream and thisxkcd comic as an apology.
(but i won't promise never to do that again. because that would be a lie.)
the other day (it was daytime; i was sick and sound asleep) i dreamed that i was in my hometown again, and about to cross the highway when i saw two tiny baby giraffes! they were very, very small (like knee-high [human knees, not giraffe knees]) and very grey, because apparently in my dream, giraffes aren't brown and yellow right from the get-go. the two tiny baby giraffes were tethered together, and also attached to one of those signboards that is made of two pieces of plywood joined at the top. the signboard was advertising a turkish circus that was coming through town, and the two tiny baby giraffes had been tied together, tied to the sign, and set free in the town to shuffle about looking sad and drum up business for the circus. (leaving aside some of the more minor yet glaringly obvious problems with the business model, i would like to point out that very few [if any] people in my hometown read turkish.)
and i decided that i had to rescue the two tiny baby giraffes! but then it turned out that they could run really fast, but then brother bear was there to help me catch them, and we were going to try to get this family who owned a fruit stand near the highway adopt them, and...okay, from there it got pretty bizarre, and i was also traveling in latin america, so i'll just stop telling you about it now.
i had this dream in which i was visiting with a dear friend, and we were somewhere in the jungle where she was living. one of her other friends was there, and she and i were looking around at our friend's furniture and belongings. in the middle of the jungle, in a little clearing, she had a huge inflatable couch, and also an enormous bunk bed that was covered in inflatable flowers. it was very strange.
and then we were at some sort of campground, and then the boy who i dated in high school and i were riding mountain bikes up a big hill, and his younger cousins found a bright orange car. it was made of paper mache, i think, because when they touched the bumper, it started to spin and spin and eventually flipped upside down into a depression in the road.
and then we had to run from the police. we ran and ran (and at that point, i woke up a little bit, realized i didn't really have to run from the police [although i had been really scared up until then], went back to sleep, considered walking for a bit, but then decided that i don't get enough exercise anyway because of the soul-crushing office job, and went back to running, which had really become more of a full-body upright swim through foam resembling vanilla pudding.)
we reached a campsite, which had apparently been ours, and hid in tents, but then decided almost immediately that we had to leave, and that we had to pack and bring everything with us. (we were still running from the police at this time.) we were furiously throwing things into bags, and trying to disassemble the tent and get everything into cars as fast as we could, and there were a lot of people with us.
then i ended up going over to this huge wagon and talking to the people there. it seems that two women who had been friends for a long time had always dreamed of owning a costume business. it hadn't really seemed like it was going to work out, but then one day one woman decided that they were going to do it after all, and they would start off with a bang by duplicating the costumes of the fire dancers in labyrinth. (you know, the awesome movie from 1986 starring jennifer connelly and david bowie's pants?) okay, okay, here are the fire dancers doing "chilly down," their song from the movie:
anyway, only one of the women had stayed with the costume company, but she had this huge wooden wagon full of costumes and clothing and jewelry and hats and accessories of all kinds, including the fire dancer costumes that had started it all off. because we were all trying to get away from whatever was chasing us all (i don't think it was really the police anymore), she had decided to give away a bunch of her stuff, starting with the fire dancer costumes. i really wanted one, for some reason, but i felt bad taking it since it was such a complicated costume. (they really did look like they did in the movie.) then there was a bunch of awkwardness because i couldn't find it, and she kept telling me to look for it, but they were all gone, and we were both very confused.
then i started to pack other things there, because i thought she wanted me to, but then i wasn't sure, and she had a little boy there who seemed kind of confused and frightened, and i was worried about him but i wasn't sure what i could really do.
and then i was looking at old zip disks (thanks, brother bear!) and found a very, very old journal that i had written in college all about a mean boyfriend, and i was so sad to see how much i had cared about him and how much i had overlooked in trying to be happy with him.
and then i woke up.
ps: check out this awesome video! it's a clip from the making of the labyrinth about the fire dancers scene. remember, dudes, they were doing all this during the 80's, back when movies had to really happen and they couldn't be created in a lab. amazing.
the players, the setting: brother bear, the dad, and i are hanging out at grandma's house. the super-catholic-yet-secretly-hindu grandma, who is awesome and occasionally says hilarious/baffling things.
as it so often is at this particular grandma's house, it is ice cream time. the dad, brother bear, and i have retreated to the kitchen to serve up gluttonously large bowls of ice cream (since all we've had so far has been thanksgiving leftovers and three pieces of pie each), when grandma starts talking to the dad.
grandma: "there's some cheese in there."
the dad: (rather perplexed, but not about to argue with her about what she can or can't eat [the dad's grandma-feeding philosophy is that once a person reaches a certain age {in her case, really really old,} they should be able to eat whatever they want, whenever they want it.]) "oh. you want me to melt some cheese on there?"
grandma: (sort of shocked that he would imply such a ridiculous thing.) "no, not me. the young people prefer cheese."
this is what happened tonight. i was babysitting, and kid #1 exclaimed (as he often does) "HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOES...YAY!*"
we had been eating dinner, and he was having a tough time with the idea of gnocchi, because i had been foolish enough to tell him that it had potatoes in it before he started eating it. he looked at me like i'd just announced that it was made out of the bones of the easter bunny and santa's head, and cried, "BUT I DON'T LIKE POTATOES!!!"
then his mom jumped in to say, "but you like those kind of potatoes! you don't like plain potatoes [sidenote: wtf?] but you like potatoes in gnocchi!" and he was down with the potatoes but then upset about the tiny bits of green stuff (parsley? something? i dunno, it didn't taste like anything) and then finally chilled out and decided that maybe he could in fact eat the pasta.
so anyway, he was possibly coming around to the idea of more than pineapple, blackberries, and orange juice for dinner when the hippoes thought occurred to him, so i asked, "are you a hungry hungry hippo?" all the while squelching my urge to tell him about how much i liked hungry hungry hippoes when i was growing up (although i may or may not be old, i try not to talk like it to little kids, because no kid wants to hear it.) he agreed with a big grin that he was indeed a hungry hungry hippo, so i encouraged the hungry hungry hippo to turn his attention to his tasty tasty pasta. then i got up to refill the orange juice cup of kid #2.
while i was standing at the counter, kid #1 snuck away from the table (okay, i totally knew he was there. i have eyes in the back of my head, and someday i'll work my way up to total momniscience) and came up behind me...and then quickly and carefully bit the back pocket of my jeans. i know he thought this was hilarious (and honestly, so did i) but we had to have a Serious Talk about how it is Not Okay to bite people, even if you are joking, because biting is not a funny joke. i opened my eyes really wide to indicate the depth of my seriousness. but on the inside, i couldn't really believe what had just happened. four year olds are stars of physical comedy, and he had really taken care to make sure that he was only biting the pocket; i didn't experience any physical discomfort (although i was a little weirded out.)
anyway, that is my kid story for the day. the end.
*i have no idea. kids say bizarre things. i know i did, and brother bear? whew! you could have filled a book. [p.s. brother bear: dead bug connected!]
